Organic outputs from alternative waste treatment (AWT) plants are considered waste and cannot legally be applied to land in NSW until an exemption is granted through the government’s 3F “gateway” legislation. With stockpiles of useless product being landfilled, industry frustration about the regulator’s lethargic response has bubbled over. Operators claim it’s “crunch time,” and the industry will fall over unless an exemption is sorted, fast.

The Waste Management Association of Australia’s AWT DORF (derived organic rich fraction) working group was established to identify and work through the issues surrounding AWT outputs. A year ago that group submitted to government a detailed report on chemical contamination, undertaken by Hyder Consulting, which effectively found the issue was a non-event.

Industry expected an exemption would be granted soon after, and products could be marketed and sold once they were no longer classified as “waste”. But while the regulator does appear convinced that chemical contamination is not a problem, it apparently remains concerned enough about physical contamination that no exemption has yet been forthcoming.

The problem is, the NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water appears unable – or unwilling – to actually outline what it wants from industry to solve this impasse. It hasn’t given guidance on what it considers an acceptable level. But it hasn’t accepted industry’s proposals either.

WMAA president Ron Wainberg claims the AWT DORF working group proposed “challenging” physical contamination guidelines for minesite rehabilitation uses, and even more stringent benchmarks for agricultural uses.

One AWT operator told Inside Waste the guidelines are tough enough that no operators would currently meet them – but they would all be committed to working towards them, so long as the regulator actually agrees to that (or another) benchmark, rather than refusing to provide any guidance on what it expects.

Of particular frustration is the fact products made from source separated organics (generally considered higher quality than those made from AWT outputs) do have a general exemption allowing them to be used. In a strange loophole, however, some material allowed through that gateway has been found with physical contamination of up to 22% - much higher than has been proposed for AWT outputs.

There’s currently no legal outlet for AWT output, even if it did outperform source separate organic products. Despite several AWT facilities popping up in NSW, with more on the way, the issue of what to do with end products continues to drag on. Is the goal here to be the same as it is in Europe, where waste is treated just to stabilise it prior to landfill? That’s certainly not the outcome AWT proponents have been aiming for.

Hanson’s outspoken landfill advocate Sam Bateman commonly derides AWT as “an expensive way to make something nobody wants”. As things stand in NSW, even if “they” wanted truckloads of the stuff, they wouldn’t legally be allowed to use it.

“It’s really disappointing that, despite everything that’s been going on over the last five years, we still don’t have an exemption,” said Wainberg.

He said it is now “crunch time” to solve the problem, especially with more councils – including Gosford – trying to tender for AWTs to help them increase resource recovery in line with the state’s 65% targets.

“How can anyone enter into a financial commitment to build these things when there’s no certainty about [the outputs]?” he questions.

He said the lack of progress on the AWT DORF exemption makes a mockery of the state’s public commitment to improving resource recovery, and puts in jeopardy the government’s own recycling targets: “if the exemption is not done and done soon, it will lock [the government] into failure”.

Ironically, it appears the recently introduced “gateway” legislation – trumpeted by the government as a way to help improve resource recovery operations –is actually the very instrument that is causing grief for AWT operators.

According to GRL’s John Lawson, “there was some regulatory uncertainty before the 3F regulations, but it was no worse for AWT composters than source separated composters”.

“The EPA was issuing operations licences for AWT composting facilities, so you could see they supported the production of AWT compost to meet government waste diversion policies.

“You couldn’t get formal advice on standards from the EPA (because there were none), but informally key staff would tell you that if your product could show beneficial use and it was not causing adverse environmental impacts, then it would be hard to imagine they’d successfully prosecute you for using recycled organics.”

Indeed it wouldn’t have only been hard but also embarrassing for the regulator, given it would have had to have accepted the plant’s Environmental Assessment for its development approval before licensing the premises.

But the problem here is not that the gateway legislation changed the playing field – it could well have changed if for the better. The problem is that DECCW has failed to provide clear advice on how the industry can secure an exemption under this “new” regime and, until it does, operators are left sitting under a dark cloud while material that many communities are willing to pay a premium to divert from landfill is ending up… in landfill.

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